Make sure the outside of you is a good reflection of the inside of youJim Rohn

InspirEmail

InspirEmail
No 296 - October 2015 - Broken Eggs and Shattered Glass'Inspirational
messages to refresh the spirit and boost the emotional bank account'

Broken Eggs and Shattered Glass

On a recent Saturday evening at around
midnight, my wife and I were just about to turn out the light and go to
sleep when we heard the sounds of a group of people talking in the
street, outside our home. Then out of the blue came two loud thuds above
our bedroom window, followed by the noise of laughter and people
running away down our street.

We both jumped out of bed, I turned on the
external lights and rushed outside unsure of what had caused the two
thuds or what damage I could expect to see. The silence of the night was
broken by the distant sound of people laughing and at that moment I was
of a mind to chase after them, however, running bare-footed on the road
in the dark is not a very wise thing to do.

I could hear dripping noises on the driveway and the flood light above our garage helped me to identify just what had happened.Our home had been the victim of an egg bombing!

Being faced with the prospect of cleaning up
this sticky mess in the early hours of the morning was not a pleasing
thought, on top of which I was less than impressed that we had been
singled out for this annoying prank. I decided that it was too late to
clean up the mess, as it would disturb our neighbours, so it could wait
to the morning.

Early next morning with a bucket of warm water
and scrubbing brush in hand, and with the extension ladder placed on
the front wall, I was now ready to wash off what was now two dry
yellowish, egg grit impregnated, 1 metre long patches above our front
bedroom windows.

My task was made even more challenging by the
two large canvas awnings which protect our bedroom windows from the heat
and glare of the afternoon sun. My annoyance with the late night
pranksters was again building to the level of the night before.

After retracting each of the awnings,
something we rarely do except when there is are very high winds, I then
climbed the ladder to clean up the first patch of egg stain and then
move the ladder to clean the second patch.

As I climbed the ladder for the second time, I
noticed that the glass in a small window just under the roof line was
very badly cracked. On closer inspection the crack ran around over half
of the outer edge of the window pane. As the awning protected the
window, it was clear to me that the damage had not been caused by the
egg bombing. As I carefully placed my hand on the glass, I discovered
that the pane of glass was very loose and had the window been closed
with any force, it would have most likely shattered and the glass
dropped to the drive way, some seven metres below.

Just a few metres away, we have a basketball
ring and on most days of the week there are up to six young people who
play in the immediate area, including both my sons. My thoughts
immediately turned to what could have happened if the broken glass in
the window had gone undetected for much longer and then suddenly
shattered. The likelihood of my two sons and their friends being
seriously injured was extremely high.

After quickly washing the remaining egg stain
off the front wall and with the help of Tom, my youngest son, I got to
work with some heavy duty masking tape and secured the cracked window as
best I could. Within 24 hours the cracked window had been replaced and
all was back to normal, except for the small bits of egg shell I kept
finding on the front drive way and stuck to our garage doors.

Over the next few days, I realised that had
our home not been bombarded by those eggs late on that Saturday night, I
may not have discovered the broken window pane before it shattered and
came down all over our drive way.

Even though it had been an
annoyance at time, the broken eggs and the stains were cleaned up very
quickly, however, the pain that could have been caused by the shattering
of glass would never gone away and would have haunted my wife and
myself, forever and a day.

The cold shudder that ran down my spine when I
first discovered the cracked window and the thought about the
consequences of someone being seriously injured or even killed, made me
realise just how very lucky we had been.

Frequently in life, the small things that
happen to us may have a negative impact and cause some form of pain,
sadness, discomfort or personal aggravation. It is often said that we
should not 'sweat the small stuff' and always look for the positive
outcome or the silver lining in those dark clouds of the current
circumstance, even though at the time that is not always an easy thing
to do.

My personal experience with the egg bombing on that
Saturday evening reminded me that in most cases there is always a flip
side to everything that happens to us and that often the flip side can
provide a positive outcome or an even greater benefit, if not now, then
at some time in the future.

From now on whenever I see or break an egg, I
will think of the egg bombing incident and say a thank you to those late
night pranksters. Equally, I will always be reminded of Jean-Paul
Sartre's quote . . . 'What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us'

Inspired by some late night pranksters and written by Keith Ready

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- Inspirational
Quote -

Most of today's worries are like puddles, tomorrow they will have evaporated Author Unknown